Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

CHAPTERS 1-5

Reading Check

1. Tetanus (Chapter 1)

2. Nobody remembers. (Chapter 2)

3. Synthetic Freedom Fighters (Chapter 2)

4. The Nexus-6 (Chapter 3)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Humans have destroyed the earth with war and abandoned it for colonies, leaving those like Iran and Rick behind in a bleak world: People wear lead shields over their reproductive organs because they are worried about fallout, and they must live in decaying and depopulated cities where technological advances—such as electric animals, mood programmers, and androids—blur the lines between authentic and artificial relationships and emotions. Despite these post-apocalyptic details, the problems Iran and Rick face are familiar and related to existential dread, or the suspicion that despite all efforts, their lives lack meaning and purpose and may even be immoral. Each holds the other responsible for their unhappiness. (Chapter 1)

2. Isidore is labeled as a “special” due to the extent that the environment has impacted his brain. As a result, he is ostracized and dehumanized both in person and through micro-aggressive commentary in TV programming. He struggles to assert his humanity and dignity to others and lives alone, finding solace in fusing with Mercer on his empathy box because it is the only place where he is allowed to be human and have community with others. (Chapter 2)

3. If Rick is unable to use the test to determine a Nexus-6 from a human, the department will be unable to use it to detain and retire escaped androids, but if he is unable to reliably identify humans, it would mean that it was possible the department had mistakenly killed humans with flattened affect arising from neurological differences, believing them to be androids. This news would undermine public trust in the police department, something the Rosen company tries to trick Rick into believing has happened when he identifies Rachel Rosen as an android. (Chapter 3)

4. This linguistic move creates immediate emotional distance from the character because it signals the difference between a person and an object, a distinction both Rick and readers will have trouble making after first believing Rachel is human. (Chapter 5)  

CHAPTERS 6-9

Reading Check

1. Authentic and artificial life (Chapter 7)

2. Mercer (Chapter 7)

3. Soviet Police Force (Chapter 8)

4. Coldness (Chapter 9)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Pris is incredibly cold and cruel regarding Isidore’s status as a “special,” but Isidore does not recognize this coldness as an android trait; his empathy regarding artificial and authentic life is no different and humans are just as cruel to him. This indicates that, on some level, empathy is an intellectual performance for humans just as it is for androids. (Chapter 6)

2. Buster’s fight may represent the merits and drawbacks of individualism and independence, whereas Mercer’s fight represents the merits and drawbacks of collectivism and interdependence. (Chapter 7)

3. Sloat’s cruelty exposes the hypocrisy of humans using empathy as a measure of a being’s “humanity” and casts doubt on the notion that one can use empathy to tell human from android. Without the stakes of the right audience or test, humans may forgo empathetic responses as well. (Chapter 7)

4. Luft uses Rick’s logic that androids would think nothing of selling out another android to accuse him of being an android, which sends him further into the existential crisis he has been courting since Iran accused him of being a murderer. (Chapter 9) 

CHAPTERS 10-13

Reading Check

1. Police Headquarters (Chapter 10)

2. His pet squirrel (Chapter 11)

3. Puberty (Chapter 12)

4. Mercerism (Chapter 13)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. The accusation that Rick is an android or hallucinating undermines the established facts of the story and creates the need for a resolution, which heightens the suspense. The ambiguity involved in the possibility that Rick has been an android the whole time also weakens Rick’s faith in the idea that an institution like the police can be trusted to accurately determine guilty from innocent with a single test. (Chapters 10-11)

3. Though he claims retirement is necessary, Rick cannot clearly articulate why and finds it difficult to reconcile the waste of Luba Luft’s operatic talent. Through grappling with the possibility that he might be an android, he has identified with the androids’ plight and developed empathy for them despite the threat this poses to his job. Resch cynically suggests this is simply the result of his sexual attraction to her. (Chapter 12)

4. Resch serves as a mirror to Rick. They are the same in most matters, but Resch has developed a fondness for retiring the androids, and this shows Rick the real brutality of the job. His revulsion for Resch serves as a reckoning regarding the lack of empathy the job requires, and he is unsure if he can continue, physically or spiritually, because of his newly revealed empathy for androids. In this way, Resch serves as a catalyst to Rick’s increasing alienation from his own identity as a bounty hunter. (Chapter 12)

5. Pris describes the barren oldness and extreme loneliness of Mars in a way that sounds no better than Earth, indicating that human dissatisfaction with life may be due to believing an external change of place could solve universal problems like loneliness, lack of purpose, dehumanization, and alienation from the self. Emigrating, though it is advertised as such, is not the solution to the characters’ most basic conflicts. (Chapter 13)    

CHAPTERS 14-17

Reading Check

1. Precolonial fiction (Chapter 14)

2. A Nubian goat (Chapter 15)

3. Four years (Chapter 17)

4. Biological tissue (Chapter 17)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Isidore has already made a connection between their status and his own; he understands that humans disdain him in the same way that they disdain androids, as they see them both as less for their differences. Just as he is barred from emigrating, they are also barred from being on Earth. By seeing himself in them, he empathizes, and so he does not see a distinction between the androids and himself. (Chapter 14)

2. Rick notices that even if Mercer suffers at the hands of the killers, he never has to violate his identity to exist and endure in the world. (Chapter 15)

3. Because Pris Stratton is the same model as Rachel, she fears she will be retired by accident and Pris will take over her life at the Rosen company. (Chapter 16)

4. Rachel claims she was sent by the Rosens to glean information to develop a Nexus-7, but she also claims that she loves and will help Rick. However, her ulterior motive for having sex with him is to deepen his empathic attachment to her and by extension other androids. This empathy may in turn make him lose his ability to pursue and retire the remaining Nexus-6 models. Misdirection, ulterior motives, and exploiting emotions through sexual enticement to undermine the main character’s objective are characteristics of the femme fatale archetype. (Chapter 16-17)

CHAPTERS 18-22

Reading Check

1. The spider (Chapter 18)

2. It is a fraud. (Chapter 18)

3. Retiring Pris (Chapter 19)

4. It is electric. (Chapter 22)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. The androids represent complete self-interest and apathy toward others, whereas Isidore represents collective interest and empathy. These opposing modes of interacting in the world show the disadvantages of being purely one or the other. The androids are so unheedingly cruel that they drive others away, but Isidore is so empathetic that he becomes a willing participant in his own exploitation. This shows that neither extreme is ideal for survival, let alone happiness. (Chapter 18)

2. Because the androids cannot fuse with the empathy box, they resent Mercerism as proof that empathy is real, and that they are truly inferior to humans in this regard. Baty believes that if Mercerism is a fraud, empathy must be as well, making androids equal to humans. (Chapter 18)

3. The life Rick believed he wanted—a life in which caring for and raising a real animal solved all his problems—does not exist. Even if Rachel had not killed the goat and made the reward for his job obsolete, his completion of the odious task leaves him feeling as though he is not himself and his life is no longer his own, since he must violate his own impulse for empathy to do the job. Who he is and what he wants has been irrevocably changed by his encounter with the Nexus-6 models. (Chapter 21)

4. Rick has overcome a trial and died a death, albeit a metaphorical one, but like Mercer, he is able to start again, as he has learned to see life even in the artificial. Like the toad, and like those remaining faithful to Mercerism, he realizes that even something inauthentic can have meaning, purpose, and value if the person invests it with meaning. This understanding will better equip him to go on and endure the next trial that comes. (Chapter 22)